Gallery and print store

Friday, 2 May 2014

This weekend (May 2nd - 4th) sees the 2014 Lyme Regis Fossil Festival taking over a small portion of south Dorset and offering all manner of talks, activities, stands and experiences for palaeontological aficionados. My palaeoart exhibit, Palaeoartworks, is situated in the middle of the action at the Town Mill and will be open until the end of the festival. Sad as it is that the exhibit is coming to a close, I'm looking forward to its final days as - finally - I'm going to get to spend some time at the gallery itself, being on hand all day Saturday and Sunday to meet festival goers and - for the first time - selling small prints of my work. If all goes well, I may look into setting up a more permanent print service.

To whet your appetite, I've posted the 'rolling gallery' - effectively a slideshow of my recent palaeoartwork - above. This video has been running for a near-month in Lyme Regis alongside the framed prints to show artwork which there wasn't space and funding enough to show. Even if you've seen it, check it out again: this is a slightly updated version with some new images. One update includes a slide urging support for genuine palaeoartists over those who merely copy and derivative work from creative individuals. As discussed here, this practise is detrimental to the artistic and commercial success of palaeoart, and needs to stop. This won't be the last you'll hear of this issue around these parts.

Where there's a logo, there's a way.

But that's not all!

At 16:00 on Sunday I'll be leaving the gallery to give a talk on palaeoart in The Hub, situated on Church Street just around the corner from the Town Mill. The talk celebrates palaeoart as a wide industry rather than just prattling on about my own work, so we'll be covering what palaeoart is, how it began, and how to approach the palaeoart process. If all goes to plan, there should be time for questions at the end. Unlike the gallery, the talk isn't free, but it's as good as: tickets are £2.50 per person, or £2 concession (you can pre-book tickets here). Visitors to the Town Mill will get something of an insight into palaeoart methodology beforehand of course, thanks to the Palaeoart Case Studies left dotted around Palaeoartworks. Tasters of what we'll cover are shown below, including a short video showing the development of my recent Baryonyxpainting (eagle-eyed viewers may briefly spy a few Scott Hartman skeletal reconstructions floating about as reference material).

If you can't make the Fossil Festival, not to worry: my plan is to have the talk recorded and posted online in some capacity by next week. If that goes well, I may turn some other talks of mine into videos too.

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Who is this 'Mark Witton' chap?

Dr Mark Witton is a palaeontologist and palaeoartist, affiliated with the University of Portsmouth, UK. My technical research is focused on pterosaurs - Mesozoic flying reptiles - but my artwork has introduced me to a wide array of different fossil animals that are just as interesting. I work as a freelance author, consultant and artist: check out my work at MarkWitton.com, follow me on Twitter @MarkWitton, and browse my books here. Contact me at wittonprints[at]gmail.com. Due to volume of email I can't always reply to messages, but I do my best.